Warsh Confirmation Moves Forward; Wells Fargo & Co Update
- 12 hours ago
- 6 min read
April 27, 2026 | After an interminable period of intransigence, the Trump Administration last week abruptly ended the Justice Department investigation of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's massive HQ renovation for the Federal Reserve Board. President Trump was right to be critical of Powell's enormous boondoggle on Constitution Avenue, but he should have called for a public inquiry by the Senate. Had Trump done that, Chairman Powell would already be gone.
This change in posture by President Trump opens the way for Kevin Warsh to be confirmed by the Senate perhaps by May 15th. More important, it provides a way for Powell to retire, which opens a second governor seat on the Board. Big question: Even with the investigation by the DOJ ended, does the Trump White House have the votes to get Warsh confirmed?
Once he is confirmed, we expect Warsh to be a relative hawk on money policy and also on the management of the Board's powerful staff. The advent of Warsh means big changes for how the Fed is organized, how policy is guided and how the staff spends its time.
We reminded Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough last week that the Federal Reserve Board is the heart of the progressive socialist project in Washington. In our October 2025 interview with Alex Pollock, he described the Chairman's power:
"The Fed became a centralized body dominated first by the Board of Governors, but really by the chairman. So you got two centralizations going on here in the Fed after 1935. One is a centralization of power out of the rest of the country into Washington, into the Board. And the second is the centralization of power in the office of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who is the chief executive of that agency and for whom all the staff works. All the hundreds of PhD economists and everybody else all work for the Chairman. And so you get this much increased power of the Chairman hitting a peak, I will say, in the days when Greenspan became “The Maestro.”
What's the Deal with Wells Fargo?
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